THE SHAKESPEARE THEATRE INVITED TO 2003 ATHENS
FESTIVALIN GREECE TO PRESENT MICHAEL KAHN'S PRODUCTION
OF THE OEDIPUS PLAYS

WASHINGTON,
D.C. - The Shakespeare Theatre announced today that
it has been invited and has accepted the offer to perform
at the 2003 Athens Festival in Greece to present Michael
Kahn's single-evening adaptation of Sophocles' Oedipus
trilogy, The Oedipus Plays,
in September, 2003, scored by composer Baikida
Carroll and choreographed by Marlies Yearby.

The most important cultural event in Greece, the Athens
Festival attracts thousands of Greeks and international
visitors each year from June to September for performances
of classical music, opera, plays and dance. Past participants
have included Maria Callas, the New York Philharmonic
with Leonard Bernstein, Rudolf Nureyev, the Kirov and
Bolshoi Ballets, Margot Fonteyn, Martha Graham, Luciano
Pavarotti, American Ballet Theatre and the Royal National
Theatre of England.

At the Athens Festival, The Oedipus Plays will be performed
under the gaze of the Parthenon in the Roman Odeon of
Herod Atticus on the south slope of the Acropolis, just
kilometers away from Thebes, the city of Oedipus. The
Odeon of Herod was the third built in Athens after the
Odeon of Pericles and that of Agrippa. Erected by Herod
in memory of his wife, Regilla, the semicircular theatre
seats 5,000 people.